Archive for ‘Hack’

Single Board computers like Raspberry pi and BeagleBoard have found wide range of applications among DIYers. This post tells you how to install Ubuntu headless server on a BeagleBoard single board computer and then configure it as a File Server using Samba (almost like a NAS). BeagleBoard XM is an OMAP3 board and works...

If you have a Sony VAIO laptop (it could be E series or S series), there is a strong chance that your laptop’s MOBO uses Insyde H2O EFI bios. Getting Ubuntu dual booting with Windows 7 is not as straight forward as it usually is for most systems. I won’t go in to the...

Due to a bug Gnome3 doesn’t load by default and only the failsafe Gnome 2 loads everything. However to enable Gnome3 or the Gnome shell with 3D effects in Fedora 16 guest installed using Virtualbox, you need to do the following: 1. After installing Fedora 16 Verne, install the guest additions as described here....

Wallpaper Clocks can be used to display “live” wallpapers for your Ubuntu box. By “live” I mean that these wallpapers have real-time working clock blended into the wallpaper image. There are ton’s of these wallpapers available at the website linked above,which really brighten up your desktop, most of these wallpapers are free to download....

This is applicable to most recent versions of Ubuntu like Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 etc. A time may come in every computer’s life when he / she has to share his / her internet connection with another computer. I am not saying that one does this for fun, but you never know what life...

While there are plenty of programs and options out there that let you backup data across different platforms like Bacula, BackupPc etc. Their setup is usually far too cumbersome for a regular user. I use my *nix box for my backup tasks. But I have a Windows 7 PC which has all the raw...

If you have an iPod / iPad / iPhone you can turn it in to a handheld video monitor which can be used as a baby monitor or for surveillance or other security purposes. The setup is very simple (you just need a working webcam and a couple of free / inexpensive software) and...

While Gnome3 vs Unity debate is going on, you can test drive Gnome3 or Gnome Shell in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty or Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick. After being initially impressed with new features introduced by Unity, I found it less useful and to a certain extent unfriendly to high resolution monitors, if you feel on similar...

VirtualBox has a built in RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) Server which allows one to access the virtual machines remotely. Here is how to get this working (I am assuming you have VirtualBox installed and Virtual Machine created): 1. Download and install VirtualBox 4.0.8 Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. 2. Enable Remote Display setting by...

Ubuntu Tweak lets you look and change whats inside the hood of Ubuntu (or Linux Mint or other Ubuntu derivatives). Basically it provides a nice GU Interface to change settings which are otherwise hidden or difficult to change, thereby allowing a more customized user experience. Installation on Maverick Meerkat is simple, first add the...

At the exciting Google I/O yesterday, the update of Honeycomb to version 3.1 was announced. It was to hit the Motorola Xoom same day but a later clarification sets it only for the 3G models first and then the update rolling out to the wifi only versions in few days and rest of honeycomb...

Quick boot OS or Fast Boot OS is the in thing these days and plenty of laptops shipped these days, come pre-installed with some version of it. While Chrome OS is still under development there are a couple of Quick boot “OSes” already out there, these are mostly Linux based and are free to...

Want to run in power saving mode or if you want to have Ubuntu scale your CPU frequency as per the demand or if you want it to run at full capacity at all times! You can achieve all this by using the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor. You can add it to the Top...

Our feed had been acting up lately and have not be updating for several days. Googling for the same didn’t really help me out much, except for a post that suggested removing (or deactivating Yet Another Related Post Plugin), which didn’t fix the issue for me. I had set 15 feeds in my WordPress...

There are times when you would need to get rid of Grub boot loader and replace it with the standard Windows boot loader, this might be necessary if you want to remove Ubuntu or any other Linux partition from your machine. Deleting Linux partitions is not enough, and you must remove Grub too. Here...

You can disable SELinux (which is more of an annoyance for regular user) by editing the config file in /etc/selinux while being root su vi /etc/selinux/config For some strange reason, I cannot run gedit or emacs while being root, hence you got to use vi, which seems to be working fine. In vi to...

If you are not able to see the new release available option in your update-manager while trying to upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx to Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat or if the command sudo do-release-upgrade returns the “no new release found” result. The you can force the upgrade by using the following command sudo...

Ubuntu Tweak lets you look and change whats inside the hood of Ubuntu (or Linux Mint or other Ubuntu derivatives). Basically it provides a nice GU Interface to change settings which are otherwise not that straight forward, thereby allowing a more customized user experience. Installation on Maverick Meerkat is simple, first add the ppa...

In Ubuntu, all the commands that you type in Ubuntu gets stored in a file called .bash_history in your ~/home folder. You can manually edit it using any text editor of your choice to remove specific terminal commands. If you want to view or delete all the commands, try this: To view: Open a...

Subsonic is a wonderful cross platform music streaming software. With a little bit of hacking it can incarnate to its video streaming avatar with on the fly video encoding and streaming capability, allowing you to remotely access and view your video collection. I have discussed this for Windows machine using Subsonic 3.8 here. A...